Franz Tost has refused to apologise to Renault for the statement released by his Scuderia Toro Rosso team on Saturday morning at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, which rebutted the criticism aimed at the Faenza-based squad by Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul.

Tost said the statement was necessary because of what was implied on Friday, and both parties are still upset with one-another, with just this weekend’s race in Brazil and the season finale in Abu Dhabi to come before they go their separate ways.

“The statement was a reaction to Cyril’s interview yesterday where he blamed the team for the power unit failures, which is absolutely wrong,” said Tost to Sky Sports F1.

“[Why] should I apologise? For all the damages we have? We’re both upset. Who started with all this nonsense? Cyril yesterday, with his stupid interview.

“Should I say ‘Oh fine, good interview from him, we accept it’? No, we don’t accept it. Therefore we came out with our statement.”

Renault special advisor Alain Prost insists they will never play dirty, and insist everything they’ve done is above board, and that the engine they supply customer teams is the same as the works Renault team also use.

“You won’t have a response from ourselves, we don’t want to enter into this game of answering,” said Prost to Sky Sports F1.

“I just listened to what Franz said. As you know, the Renault company involved in F1 for a long time, and we prove that by giving exactly the same engine to everybody, which is not the case of the other manufacturers.